WFR - The 7x57mm has been my all-time favorite cartridge ever since I first heard about it from Outdoor Life and Jack O. My first one was a tang safety Ruger Model 77, my second was a Ruger Mark II, I replaced that with another Mark II and now, I own a CZ 550 American in 7x57mm. I shoot nothing but 160 grain Nosler Partitions and 162 grain Hornady SSTs over H414. The CZ has the long, very long in fact, throat on it and I load so the bullets' ogive is .15 off the lands. This means the bullets are seated way out there. I have slightly less than one caliber in the neck of the Remington cases. My SSTs measure something like 3.295 inches OAL. My load is 48.3 grains of powder fired by Federal 210 primers. With this load I chronographed it in New Mexico when I lived there and it measured 20 shot string average of 2,815 fps. That was at 8,000 feet elevation. In El Paso, at my brother's home, the same load measured 2,784 fps. El Paso was at 4,400 feet or something like that. I have used that combo on whitetail deer in Texas, wild hogs in Texas, Elk in New Mexico and Colorado, antelope in Wyoming, mule deer in New Mexico. I even used it on a wild turkey with a head shot in Texas where shooting turkey with a rifle is okay. With the SSTs my group averages off sandbag rests have been .461 inch three-shot group and .540 groups with the partitions. By the way, all of the animals I hunted, with the exception of one hog, were one shot kills. I popped a 5x5 bull broadside at 325 yards into the boiler room with the partition and it was not a bang-flop, but at the shot he hunched slightly, took a couple of steps backwards, sat on his butt like a big puppy dog and then fell over dead. The hog was shot with a killing shot the first time, but I put another round into him when he moved. The cartridge is fantastic. I did have to bed my Ruger rifles, but I did not have a pressure point in the forearm area. The barrels were freefloated. Good luck with your rifle and that wonderful little 7x57mm. Tom Purdom
